DISGRACELAND - Britney Spears (Pt. 1): Trauma Pop

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

No musician owned pop music quite like Britney Spears at the turn of the century. After graduating from Mississippi tween queen to full-fledged American superstar, her fame exploded at a time when tabloids circled celebrities like prey. 30 to 45 predatory paparazzi would follow Britney’s every move during 12 to 14 hour shifts, eager to document the collapse of her marriage and social circle. As her public image crumbled, it’s no wonder Britney ended 2007 with a bald head and a “blackout.” The conservatorship that came next, however, surprised everyone—even Britney herself. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including domestic violence and suicide. If you're thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255. This episode was originally published on July 12, 2022. For the full list of contributors, visit ⁠disgracelandpod.com⁠ To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that.

David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monsu, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Movies can make you feel, make you dream. Sometimes they even make you appreciate architecture. Is there anybody who's been hotter in a doorway than Elizabeth Taylor? That's the kind of analysis you'll find every week on Dear Movies I Love You, the new podcast from the Exactly Right Network. Every Tuesday, we break down the films we're crushing on, from blockbusters to deep cuts. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Britney Spears are insane. She was once offered $10 million for her virginity. At the peak of her fame, 30 to 45 predatory paparazzi followed her every move every day during 12 to 14-hour shifts.

One company logged 40,000 hours of stalking her, accrued between only eight men. Her father tormented her childhood with anger and alcohol issues. And decades later, a judge granted that same man a conservatorship. over Brittany, his turbulent track record be damned. But despite the challenge is thrust upon her between her family and a constant media frenzy, Britney Spears made great music. Unlike that music, I played for you at the top of the show.

That wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron titled Candid Camera, MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to low by Flo Rida and T. Payne. And why would I play you that specific slice of boots with the fur cheese, could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on February 1st, 2008. And that was the day that Jamie Spears was granted a temporary conservatorship over his daughter, a temporary conservatorship, that would stretch on for 13 years. On this episode, predatory paparazzi, a not-so-temporary.

conservatorship. And this is extra, extra this just in, Britney Spears. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is disgrace land. Jamie Spears knew he had to be fast if you wanted to get away with it. His legs trembled. He could barely keep his knees from buckling. The ground swayed before him like a ship tossed around at sea. But it was the preschooler squirming in his arms that slowed him down the most. Jamie's sloppy steps sunk into the Louisiana dirt as he trudged towards the car. His labored exhales cast out the odor of liquor on his breath, a sterile smell, so strong that it overpowered the scent of the family crawfish boil he was leaving behind. Perhaps, just perhaps, Jamie was so hammered that afternoon that no one had bothered to see what he was up to.

Jamie couldn't do any harm when he was slumped on the sofa, wasted, right? Couldn't start trouble a lighthearted family affair centered around finger-licking southern fair wrong he could saunter off and slip behind the steering wheel jamy haphazedly buckled his daughter brittany into the back seat not no more than five years old brittany already knew better than to ask questions she was all too familiar with her family's routine daddy drinks daddy picks on mama daddy and mama fight until they run out of breath brittney runs off to her on shonda's trailer until the screaming stops until her own internal terrified screaming stops until her own internal terrified screaming returns home, don't complain about the mystery made on your plate, and go on with your business. Jamie slammed the door on Brittany's do-eyed expression in the back seat.

Muscle memory helped him get behind the wheel. He slumped in the front seat and aimlessly jabbed the side of the steering wheel with his keys. But where was the goddamn ignition? Jamie was so wasted. He swore he saw an arm reach inside and knocked the keys from the ignition. And the arm spoke to him in a familiar southern drawl, asked him, he was out of his mind and how much he had to drink. Or was that Willie, his brother.

Shit, it was Willie. It was all real. Like a reflex, Jamie slugged the face attached to that arm right in the face, and the blow bowled Willie over. Jamie wobbled out of the front seat of the car, rolled up his sleeves. A full-on family feud broke out, and each brother had the same question. What the fuck do you think you're doing?

Brittany, still secured in the back seat, had a front row view of what her family did best. knocked down, dragout fights. She kicked and wailed, trying to flag down a family member before someone lost a tooth or Brittany lost any more of her childhood innocence. Just as Jamie raised his fist to hit Willie one more time, her mother, Lynn scampered over to break up the brawl. After all, she was used to putting an end to fights with Jamie. She did it all the time. In the 80s and 90s, life with Jamie Spears was not stable.

Not when he cheated on Lynn in their own trailer. not when he changed careers from welder to chef to small business owner. Not when he was pounding drinks and picking fights with his own family, saying Lynn was surely too stupid to have finished her harder and college degree. The Spears didn't nickname him Captain Redass for nothing. But just as Brittany saw nothing out of the ordinary when she watched her parents' marriage dissolve, argument by argument, Jamie didn't see the dysfunction either. He came from his own busted childhood,

stained by the day he matured from boy to man when his mother left, the house one afternoon he never returned. Instead, they found her corpse in a cemetery, bled out just a few feet above the final resting place of her infant son, Austin Wayne. A shotgun rested by one bare foot that was used to pull the trigger. It was the kind of scene that could really fuck up not just one family, but two. As a result, Jamie was an unstable man passing trauma from one generation to the next, floating through a sleepy, hardworking but equally unstable town called Kentwood. With the population of barely more than 2,000 people,

the town rests 90 miles north of New Orleans, a rural contrast to the extravagance of the Big Easy. Kentwood's median annual income is only half of the national median, and the spears weren't exactly raking it in themselves. Lynn brought home a modest schoolteacher's wage, while Jamie dedicated himself to a venture he called Total Fitness by Jamie, a quote-unquote health spa built in a barn, the Spears residence. More accurately, he owned a gym with a hot tub and a steam room and charged

members $300 a month. The luxury of the concept was novel at first, but interest in Kentwood's new spa eventually tapered off. Neighbors were no longer paying up to kick back, and Jamie grabbed his gun and resorted to dire measures to provide for his family. When the fridge was empty in the Spears household, the food on the table was rabbit. When there wasn't rabbit, squirrel would do. All freshly caught, skinned, and cooked in the Spears' backyard. Brittany never questioned that either. She knew much of her family's income was funneled into the dance and gymnastics lessons she enjoyed so much.

She had a hunch her mother enjoyed the lessons as well. Bringing out the child star on Brittany was Lynn's final attempt to make the Spears a happy family, like a flimsy band-aids slapped over a shotgun wound. The endless classes calmed some of the chaos in the Spears' household. Better yet, they were moving. Britney from the house so she would not have to remove herself when Lynn and Jamie inevitably broke into nasty bouts of fighting. But the lessons did more than get Britney out of the house. It put her on stages on screens. She made her debut on Star Search at age 10, belting the old Judd's tune,

Love can build a bridge with remarkable maturity. She was an understudy for a role in the off-Broadway show, ruthless as a pre-tee. Brittany sailed closer with stardom when she was selected as one of the seven new recruits for the hit Disney Channel show the Mickey Mouse Club in 1993. And Brittany fought for that spot twice. Agents adored her during her first audition, but ultimately passed when they realized she was only eight years old. The second time, she beat out 20,000 other children for her spot as a mouse ceteer, working long days in Orlando, Florida.

Of the seven recruits in 1993, four would ascend to superstardom. Justin Timberley, Christina Aguilera, Ryan Garland. and of course, Brittany herself. But in the mid-90s, no one would have guessed that Britney Spears would be the child star to come out on top, especially when the Mickey Mouse Club said, see you real soon for the final time in 1994 and stopped filming new episodes. When Brittany returned to Kentwood, things were not the same. They were worse.

When the Mickey Mouse Club ended, so did Britney's weekly $1,000 paychecks. The same checks that were helping keep squirrels and rabbits all. off their dinner plates. There was also a new mouth to feed. In addition to Big Brother Brian, who was three years older than Brittany, little sister Jamie Lynn was born when Brittany was nine and a half. Employees at the health spa went unpaid. The family's Ford probe was repoed. Phone lines were cut. Total fitness by Jamie collapsed. Eventually, Jamie was filing for bankruptcy. But he wasn't sweating it too hard. Jamie knew Brittany was about to come through for the Spears family again.

His teenage daughter just inked a development deal with Jive Records to pivot from silver screen to pure pop star. Jive Records, the home base of N-Sync, a tribe called Quest, and Alia, aka the big ones. My daughter's going to be so rich she's going to buy me a boat, he told the senior director of marketing a Jive. At the moment, Jamie's financial woes were the last thing on his mind. Brittany was about to go big, way big.

He could smell it. The cover of Rolling Stone. A single topping the Billboard Hot 100. Ten million copies sold worldwide. An American bubble gum teen dream come true. She even had a hit single already in the can. Hit me again or something like that. TLC didn't want it.

The Backstreet Boys didn't want it. But Brittany seized the opportunity and flew all the way to Sweden to recording. Jamie might not have known much about show business, but he knew for damn sure the record labels didn't fly nobody's halfway around the world. His daughter was going to be a star. And he was going to get that fucking book. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl.

You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield. And in this new season of The Girlfriends, Oh my God, this is the same man. A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by a truck.

I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves. Listen to the Girlfriends. Trust me, babe.

On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do.

Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance Like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire

the Kardashian family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been a sleepwalk. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction

or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things.

Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien.

And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the criterion closet? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got two. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells,

running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form. I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. you get your podcasts. Brittany Spears counted the dots hovering in her periphery.

One dozen, two dozen, three dozen. Maybe there were even four dozen, but she couldn't tell for certain when they kept darting around so frantically, closing in on her against the hood of her white convertible. She didn't need to count them one by one anymore. She had played this game enough times to estimate with precision. Three dozen for sure, she concluded to herself. Brittany blanked in an attempt to clear her vision. She narrowed her eyebrows and looked straight ahead.

Dots be damned. She eased her foot down on the gas pedal, the Mercedes, and crept forward with hesitation. Not unlike the hesitant look plastered on Britney's face. One hand cupped over her mouth. Teary eyes shielded with designer shades. The kind of look you wear when you've just been informed you've lost all visitation rights for your children.

It was October 2008. Brittany's sons, Sean, and Jaden, were illegally in the care of her ex-husband, Kevin Fed. line now, as the judge just informed her in the courthouse she was leaving, or attempting to leave anyways, but the dots weren't having that. The dots were always there when bad news found Brittany. The dots made bad news out of her reacting to bad news. Photo-hungry pricks. Brittany, look this way, Brittany! Her foot slipped and pressed down harder on the gas pedal. The convertible lurched forward before she gets slammed on the brake. Her descent down the ramp of the parking

garage lasted longer than a world tour. She eased her foot on. on the pedal one more time and the speedometer crept from zero miles an hour to three. And then the screaming started, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. The horde of paparazzi finally backed off, disgust and murdered. From where they were standing, all the paths heard it. An audible crack, as a tire crushed a paparato's foot under the weight of Britney's Mercedes. Brittany saw her chance and made her ungraceful exit, peeling out into the street. The greedy photographer in question wagged his proof to a fellow camera.

man, pointing out the filthy tire mark that graced the top of his socked foot, poking out from a pair of sandals. Serves him right, I mean, what kind of man wears sandals to work anyways, right? But I digress. The guy didn't know whether to cry in pain or ecstasy. He had much more than a broken foot. He had a headline and a lawsuit against Britney Spears. Jackpot. In the late 2000s, Britney Spears was an industry. But covering Britney Spears, that was an empire. There was no Instagram in 2007, no TikTok, there was barely even Facebook. If the public wanted to hear about a celebrity's life, they needed newsstand staples like people, okay, us weekly.

Nobody was liking photos of carefully curated interior design or latte foamer. They were searching out photos of costly couture, designer drugs, and sloppy penthouse parties. The kind of excess that makes the pit of your stomach feel sick. So sick, you almost kind of like it. It was an era that was before the explosion of social media and before the recession of 2008, that it prompted magazines like Us Weekly to have a weekly photo budget of $140,000. And if the staff wanted photos of Britney Spears that week, well, let's just say they could easily exhaust that budget for only one or two photos.

To be Britney Spears in Los Angeles in 2007, meant to be the most sought-after, most snapped celebrity on the market. Pauberati made a business out of Britney Spears, a business and took a piece of Britney Spears. and gave it back. One exclusive photo of Brittany doing literally anything came with a price tag of tens of thousands of dollars. Stills and videos of a bald Britney ramming the tip of an umbrella

into the four explorer of one pushy pap, you know the one, racked up close to $400,000. But by the fall of 2007, long after the day Brittany took Clippers to her scalp or dented that unlucky paparazzo's car, exclusive photos of Britney Spears didn't exist anymore. They didn't exist because between 30 and 45 paparazzi followed her every move, every single day. They pursued her with the hopes that she'd be willing to give it up.

A real hypersexual industry term, meaning a celebrity will indulge a paparazzo and pose for a memorable photo or two. Paris Hilton gave it up all the time, but Brittany, Brittany was a wild card. She only gave it up some of the time, and not so much in 2007. There were regulars in the game who proudly flaunted their aptitude for ambushing Brittany. There was Hollywood.tv, the outlet responsible for capturing incidents like the aforementioned foot mutilation. Then there was X-17 Online, a celebrity gossip site that claimed to have earned $3 million in 2007 from Britney photos alone, a whopping one-fourth of revenue from the paparazzi photos that year. One group of eight men working under the group named MBF for X-17 Online logged 40,000 man

hours of stalking and shooting Britney. A leaked memo from the Associated Press even stated to staff that anything Brittany does is news. They had her obituary saved in drafts at the time, too. Britney Spears wanted dead or alive. Hollywood's most patient and well-paid photographers practice doorstepping, a term for literally waiting outside of a celebrity's driveway

or doorstep until they departed. Cops often rousted paps three to four times a day at Britney's residence. And they scattered like roaches, only to circle back later for another chance at their predatory pullet surprise moment. And their days spent doorstep and could last anywhere between 12 and 14 hours.

But once the A-lister in question was on the move, that's when the real fun began. Fuck a stop sign. Peel through those red lights. Make that pedal go all the way down, all the way to the metal, God damn it. Popsie couldn't be bothered with traffic loss because even if they did catch a ticket,

the fine would pale in comparison to the money they were about to make. Their recklessness was matched only by their stamina. When it came to car chases to catch a frame or two of Britney's behavior, paparazzi happily trailed her for up to four hours. Exhaustion was not an option. Not when a single click of a button could earn you a down payment on the house in Beverly Hills. If Britney vomited on herself in her car, if she stepped out of her convertible without a pair of panties,

if she so much as walked with your dog London in her arms, they were there to document it. Another sloppy entry into Hollywood's diary paired with a snarky hypercritical caption. Often, the media circus crowded Brittany to the point of near blindness. Only a month prior to crushing the paparazzo's bones to bits, Brittany hit a parked car on her way to pick up some vitamins. As they trailed her convertible and jumped in front of it, Brittany dinged another car in the parking lot.

And then she picked up her pills and left. The incident not only racked up a hit-and-run charge, but revealed that Brittany was behind the wheel without a license. And that was the final fuck-up in her custody battle with Kevin. But if people followed your every step, sip, smoke, and chopping spree, someone would catch you fucking up eventually. Plaster's some sort of oops-she-did-it-again headline on there, and you've got supermarket checkout gold.

A camera greeted Brittany in every direction, literally. It's a well-known tactic that the paparazzi work in threes, boxing a celebrity into a triangle that they can't turn away from. The days of a virginal bubbly Britney Spears had passed. The sweet Southern bell prancing around in a Catholic schoolgirl uniform collecting accolades, collecting fans worldwide, merely winking

at risk gay behavior was an early odds face. Now, the public demanded a disaster, daily and the paparazzi's involvement ensured it. Her misery meant that there was money to be made. And you can say the media wasn't always this invasive, but it was.

The disrespect was always there. It just wasn't so visceral at the time. Are you breasts real? Are you a virgin? Did you fuck Justin Timberlake? Never mind. Justin just went ahead and answered that one for you. Slut. One man offered Brittany $10 million for her virginity in 2000 when she was barely 18. Now, when rumors of a sex tape with Kevin Federline started spreading via Us Weekly,

a judge wouldn't even hear Brittany out for a case of defamation. Their logic, Britney had been disrobing in public for almost a decade now. Brittany did this to herself. People, the media, the powers of be, always wanted the public to think Britney did this to herself, whether this was an unflattering photo, an overwhelmed meltdown, or a nasty hypersexual rumor. They never mentioned the pushing, the groping, the greedy hands of the world's trashy tabloid readers. But Brittany was about to fall into a new set of hands. A set of hands so greedy, it wouldn't let her go for 13 years.

We'll be right back after this word, word, word, word. There's two golden rules that any man should live by. Rule one, never mess with a country girl. You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes. And rule two, never mess with her friends either. We always say that trust your girlfriends. I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of the girlfriends... Oh my God, this is the same man.

A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist. I felt like I got hit by it. a truck. I thought, how could this happen to me? The cops didn't seem to care. So they take matters into their own hands. I said, oh, hell no. I vowed. I will be his last target. He's going to get what he deserves.

Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in.

Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb. And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance. Like he's about to attack me. Like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going. And the airman.

March is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been at sleepwalk. David O'Yellowo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurbin.

Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Moderato from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Marone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea

on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Remember when you'd walk into your local video rental place and there were always those two employees behind the counter arguing about movies? Well, that's us. I'm Millie to Cherico. And I'm Casey O'Brien.

And now we're arguing about movies on our podcast, Dear Movies I Love You, from the Exactly Right Network. Can I say something about the Criterion Clause? Go ahead, dude. They're letting too many people in there. Okay, that's another film, grape I got to. Sadly, that rental place doesn't exist anymore. It's probably a store that sells running shoes. Or an ice cream shop with an extra pee and an E at the end. So consider us your slacker movie clerks in podcast form.

I would like to establish a timeline of the moment you have, figured out who Channing Tatum was. Every Tuesday, we dig into the movies we can't stop obsessing over, from hidden gems to big screen favorites. New episodes drop every week on the exactly right network. Listen to Dear

Movies I Love You on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hands slap the windows, fists pounded on the car's hood. Fans left handprints every time Britney's limo paused for a stop sign. She couldn't peek it much through the tinted windows, but she knew

reporters had to be tagging along too, obscuring the brilliant neon of the Las Vegas strip with their own camera flashes. An empty bottle of booze rolled around the back seat and clinked against Britney's heels. For once, Brittany felt grateful for the commotion. It filled the silence between her and the boy toy sharing the back seat with her, positioned an awkward few feet apart from each other. She preferred the sound of harassment to the sound of their strained relationship. She preferred the sound of harassment to the feel of harassment, too. The limo halted at the ornate lobby of her hotel. Last stop.

Brittany burst through the limoed door and braced for the worst. She forged ahead with every ounce of energy in her 5'4 frame, but the crowd outside consumed her, swallowed her in a sea of microphones, spit her up, disheveled and disoriented. Her mystery man shouldered his way through the crowd by her side and got a similar smackdown. One he then passed along to a smattering of tabloids bearing Britney's face on the cover. He literally smacked them down off the nearby newsstand. Images for her face covered the floor,

and the mob marched right over them. Privacy was a luxury, Brittany learned. So too was personal space. Luxuries that she, one of the most lucrative pop stars in the world, somehow couldn't afford. The irony made the glistening luxury of her presidential suite feel meaningless, pointless, even. Once inside, Brittany stormed off to the bathroom.

Everyone could step the fuck out of her way for good, the boy toy too. He launched a vase filled with exotic flowers at the wall in frustration, but Brittany was already turning away. Away from him, away from fame, away from everybody. Enough. She locked herself in the bathroom and acted mechanically. Fawcett on, pearly gown, off, bathtub filled, step inside and sink, sink. Blood matted in her hair from a paparazzi inflicted. gashed the back of her head. The bathwater turned a sickly shade of red. It didn't matter.

All she needed to do was sink. Sink. In 2003, that's how Britney Spears pictured her final unraveling. Alone, abused, entirely misunderstood. She acted out her worst fears in the video for her song every time, a bawling ballad from her album in The Zone. Hard to believe such a downer is on the same record is toxic, the single that solidified her name in the long-term pop game. The song that proved that once Brittany got past the whole, not a girl, not yet a woman phase, and into the totally a woman phase, she could fucking own it. But back to every time. The video hints at reincarnation for Britney Spears, the soul while Britney Spears, the celebrity, sinks to the bottom of the bathtub. And five years later, that wasn't quite how Britney Spears' life actually unraveled. She got the

bathroom detail right though. Brittany was shouting through the door of her private bathroom. I'm fucking hot. No cop was going to tell her to cover up. Not today. January, 2008. Brittany clutched her son, Jaden, with a grip that was so tight it was almost painful. Her bare back rested against the bathroom door. She bounced them up and down on her lap and an attempt to sue them in spite of the circus waiting on the other side. The police wanted her to put on a sweater, they said. Uh-uh. Keep your sweater. I'll keep my kids. How about that? The time for Brittany to return her son, Sean and Jaden,

to her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, had passed hours ago. But Britney wasn't ready to give them back, or give them up, which is how she saw it. Just hours prior, Brittany and Kevin stood face-to-face in court, staring each other down over custody of their children. Kevin had already wanted a request for temporary full custody of both boys, and now he was trying to make it permanent. Brittany could bear the weight of almost anything of an alcoholic father, poverty, being pushed around by news outlets just begging her to have another breakdown. But she couldn't take the idea of losing her sons forever, not to her backup dancer ex-husband, not to anybody.

The thought chilled her, and she pressed Jaden further into her naked chest. She knew she was supposed to give the boys back at 7 p.m. A court-appointed child monitor had even buckled Sean into his car seat, ready to return to dad. and that's when Brittany scooped up Jaden and bolted for the bathroom. Confounded, the child monitor called the cops, and then the cops invited a steady stream of additional cops as the situation and Brittany grew more agitated. She rejected their sweater even more aggressively

than their attempts to retrieve Jaden. It was past 10 p.m. now, and Brittany had lost all sense of time. Her thoughts tumbled from her lips in incoherent sentences, and the bathroom reeked of sweat. The air stale from hours spent in during the police standoff. She didn't know it was 11 o'clock, when the cops finally coaxed her out of the bathroom or why they coaxed her out of the bathroom,

but in doing so, they scooped Jaden to so-called safety. In the music video for every time, paramedics retrieved Britney from the bathtub and wheel her limp body outside on a gurney. In real life, they strapped her to the gurney under her white sheet before they brought her outside to the ambulance. The next scene played out exactly, the same as in the video. It was life, imitating art, imitating life. Flashes, frenzy, fucking

disregard for the severity of the situation. Vultures. This was 2008. Brittany had already righteously lashed out with her 2007 album, Blackout. A tipsy burst of pop perfection meant to be played on the brink of slipping in between states of consciousness at the club and loving every second of it. Despite the fact that it was Brittany's first album to not debut atop the Billboard 200, Blackout illuminated the public demand for Brittany's music, not just her PR mishaps. The records sold more than 120,000 copies a day it dropped and set a new record at the time for weekly digital album downloads by a woman. Its iconic slees earned a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame musical archive. Blackout was peak-pop perfection built on embracing life's imperfections. Brittany admonished

the media with edgy auto tune on the album's second single, Peace of Me, and the Papps let the threat roll their lenses and accepted the challenge, and their response, give me more. Paparazzi hungrily wove their cars in between six police cruisers and ambulance and a fire truck to climb the summit, Britney's mansion, purchased post-divorce. A helicopter surveyed the full scene, a mosaic of unwelcome guests scrambling for unflattering photos of a woman enduring a mental health crisis. An ambulance rushed Brittany to Cedarsinae Medical Center on a 5150 hold, medical speak, for a person who is in danger to themselves or others as a result of a mental disorder.

Individuals on a 5150 are supposed to be subject to 72 hours of involuntary psychiatric hold for treatment and evaluation. If the situation doesn't improve, it can be upgraded to a 5250, which entails up to 14 days of intensive psychiatric treatment. But Brittany never got that far. Instead of 72 hours, Brittany barely lasted 24. During her brief stay, she didn't. She didn't not only temporarily lost visitation right through their boys, but gained an unwelcome visit from Dr. Phil in her hospital room chatting her up for material to use in his next episode. She was, as the celebrity pseudosychologist put it, in dire need of both medical and psychological intervention. Privacy and personal space were luxuries that she had almost forgotten.

Fuck this. Back to the summit, Brittany went. If only she had stayed for the full 70, two hours, the next decade of her life might have gone much differently. One dozen motorcycle officers, two police cruisers, two police helicopters. The team of cops moved in tandem securing what they called the package within the safety of their human barricade. The package, of course, was Britney Spears. The caravan forced a path down the driveway of the summit to move the package as swiftly as possible. They lumbered down the hill with confidence. the pap scattered on command, the exact same paparazzi who jammed the driveway shut for hours, hence the extraordinary police escort.

The sheer number of unwanted cars and people that evening pushed a Los Angeles City Councilman to propose new legislation that would guarantee celebrities in L.A. a personal safety bubble of 25 yards. Their presence was that dangerous and that expensive for the city. The total cost of Brittany's security for one hospital ride was $25,000. The Paps, crowding the driveway, muttered amongst themselves as the ambulance cruised by. So much for the suicide tip-off they had received. Brittany was clearly very much alive. Boo-hoo, but then again, if they lost Brittany, who would they harassed night after night, day after day?

And who would bring those easy millions earned from forcing themselves into somebody else's meltdowns and mental health crises? They could consider this their chance for a jaw-dropping snap because life at Camp Brittany was about to go radio silent. January 31st, 2008, another 5150 hold for Brittany, only four weeks into the new year. Jamie Spears, her dad, was ready to pounce this time. As police and paramedics wheeled Brittany to the UCLA Medical Center, Jamie got out a pen, a paper, and old Captain Redass started spilling out a hodgepodge of legal jargon. He was about to file a request for a temporary conservatorship of his daughter. Hold up.

The word conservatorship has been thrown around hundreds of times in the past two years, but rarely is it explained in detail. A conservatorship is a legal arrangement put into place when a person is unable to care for themselves or their finances. In some cases, conservators work on behalf of a person who is not capable of fulfilling their basic needs, finding food, water, shelter, clothing. Other times, conservators control all of someone's financial assets, lest the conservatee be duped into giving their money away. Jamie filed for both types, a conservatorship of Brittany's person and her estate. It shouldn't be surprising that most conservatorships assist elderly people who are forgetful, gullible, or generally confused. What is surprising is that Jamie Spears filed for a temporary conservatorship for his 26-year-old daughter and checked off orders related to dementia placement as the reason.

Jamie Spears, the man who tormented his family with his anger and alcohol problems, was asking for complete control of his adult daughter because she suffered from so-called dementia-like symptoms. A Superior Court Commissioner placed Brittany under Jamie's care via a temporary conservatorship on February 1, 2008. One day after her second mental health emergency. One day. Jamie had been waiting for this, waiting for six weeks, to be exact. His scapegoat for the situation was a man named Sam Lutfi. Sam had suspiciously squeezed himself into Brittany's inner circle at a time when Britney's inner circle barely existed.

In 2008, she had no manager. Instead, she had Sam, her quote-unquote life coach. But from where Jamie was sitting, Sam was Britney's undoing. The devil perched on her shoulder, whispering nonsense in her year at all hours. There was only room for one bad guy in Brittany's life, and that was Jamie. And Sam had sway. too much sway, a dangerous amount of sway, the kind of you get from crushing pills into someone's food. They also claimed on the day of Brittany's bathroom standoff that Sam informed her that Kevin

called the house and stated that she could keep the boys for a few more hours. He even lived at the summit in his own private bedroom, only two doors down from Britney's bedroom. With that privilege came his self-appointed status as gatekeeper to Britney. He welcomed some paparazzi inside and barricaded certain loved ones out. Sam Lutfi had the inn, Jamie wanted him out. On February 1, 2008, Jamie Spears gained complete access to Brittany. More access than Sam. More access than the 30 to 45 daily paparazzi could ever imagine.

More access than Brittany even had to herself. Her dad gained the ability to speak with her doctors, to examine her medical records, to okay every single person Brittany worked with, to enforce around-the-clock security. He was a conservator of her person now, and the co-conservator of her estate alongside a lawyer named Andrew Wallet.

And that's the guy's real name, Andrew Wallet. You could say that a father decided to step back into his daughter's life to help her break a self-destructing cycle of chaos. But more evidence would point towards the fact that one man saw the chance to seize control over a massive amount of talent, money, and celebrity. And he took it and called the situation. temporary.

I'm Jake Brennan, and in this episode, a disgrace land is to be continued. Scraiceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod.com

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